


To The Ocean

by autisticalistair



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sea Monsters, Witch Thorin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticalistair/pseuds/autisticalistair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo doesn't know what to make of it when he starts to notice strange things happening in his coastal home of Stonemere. An apparently regular storm cycle, voices on the wind, shells finding their way into his work bag and the smell of the sea finding its way into his home, a mile from the beach. In the middle of it all, he meets a stranger who seems to know things about him, despite the two of them having never met. It's enough to unnerve Bilbo into fear, but fear makes him curious, and, well, he could never quite help being curious, could he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> The heart can think of no devotion  
> Greater than being shore to the ocean-  
> Holding the curve of ones position,  
> Counting an endless repetition.  
>  _Devotion, by Robert Frost ___

There was a beach up north Bilbo went to with his parents as a child. It was a cold, dark beach, with rickety stairs leading down the cliff face and the bitter smell of brine permeating everything. Bilbo had no idea why they went there, of all places, but he’s never been able to see it in a bad way. No, he doesn't look at the frankly quite miserable beach and think ‘mum and dad were insane to make this a holiday tradition’. He looks at the freezing waters and rotting driftwood and sees his childhood. 

He gripped his mother's arm as they walked down the steps together, towards the beach. The sharp autumn wind tore at Bilbo’s coat and Belladonna’s scarf, silk and embroidered with pale flowers. It was early November, and not too far south from the eastern Scottish border, it got colder quicker than down in the West Country. 

Bilbo had been living here with his widowed mother for the last four years. He couldn’t remember what Wiltshire looked like most days. 

“Cup of tea at home?” he asked when they got to the foot of the steps. 

“Sounds lovely,” Belladonna said, patting his hand. “Come on, you promised me a walk around the beach.”

Bilbo smiled and leg his mother to the wonky wooden path sunk deep into the sand. He could remember running along it as a child (and tripping and cutting his lip once or twice), so he went carefully, doubly conscious that he had a woman in her sixties who often used a cane on his arm. Not that she was frail, Bilbo just had a habit of worrying. 

The beach was quiet, for the most part. A couple of old fishermen and a young woman with two boys, both of them running around after their dog. The woman - their mother? - saw them and waved, and Bilbo and Belladonna waved back before continuing on their way. The town was small, but people kept to themselves, so even four years here, Bilbo had few friends. 

He didn’t mind. He was a preschool teacher, for gods sake, if he ever got out of the house outside of work it would be to go food shopping or go walking with his mother. Besides, he was happy enough with his life as it was. Quiet. Peaceful. The result of four years of settling into a new place so that he might have a better life here than in Salisbury. 

They walked the short length of the beach together. It took a while, and Bilbo was frozen solid by the time they returned home. But it was worth it to see Belladonna happy. Bilbo made her the promised cup of tea and sat down with her in the front room while she read and he made quick calls. The first, to Belladonna’s doctor, to make sure that her appointment was at ten tomorrow morning. He really needed to get a planner of some kind, he thought. Maybe next payday…

That wasn’t for another two weeks, so he knew he’d forget and not put anything aside once food and bills had been sorted. 

Belladonna fell asleep in her armchair with her open book on her chest and Bilbo retreated upstairs, where he could have some time to himself. 

It was slow Sundays like this that he actually got to recharge and prepare for the week ahead. He taught preschool five days a week for a few hours at a time. As a generally solitary person, Bilbo needed time to rest and recuperate. Belladonna understood that - she always had, even when he was a child, she understood that. And in a way, she was the same. Since Bungo died, she was much quieter and much more reserved. She had said it was something to do with her fire dying with him, though Bilbo didn’t believe that for one second. 

In his room, he stretched out on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. It had started raining just as they were walking home, and it got heavier and heavier until it was lashing against the windows and drowning out everything else. Bilbo turned his head to watch it trail down in drops down the glass. The sky was dark outside from the storm. 

Bilbo rolled over onto his side and looked at his clock. It was only four in the afternoon. Too early to start on dinner, and not the greatest time to grab a snack, and he wasn’t really the quietest person in the world. With Belladonna asleep downstairs, he didn’t want to risk waking her just to get something to eat. 

He was so tired. 

It had been a rough week. Three kids with cold and a particularly nasty parent who thought that shouting at a man who only just reached five feet five about his son getting told off for hitting another child was a good idea. Bilbo wasn’t a parent, and though he wanted to be, one day, he was slowly but surely starting to lose his patience with parents who thought it was okay to disrespect the people responsible for actually  _ teaching  _ them. 

At least he hadn’t stayed teaching secondary. That had drained him to the point where he seriously considered not getting out of bed again for the rest of his life. He’d seen a doctor about it, and he was prescribed antidepressants and a career change. 

At least the career change worked. 

He had just quit his job as a Lit teacher when Bungo died. Literally, only two weeks later, Bilbo got a sniffly call from Belladonna saying  _ ‘he’s in hospital, Bilbo. He’s not going to last the night’ _ . Bilbo had almost broken at least five speeding laws getting there, and he made it with only an hour to spare. An hour later, and Bungo had died. 

Heart failure. 

Bilbo groaned and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. As much as he valued these days where he could just sit around and do nothing, he was bored.  _ So  _ bored. He had given up writing a long time ago, and never got the hang of any other kind of hobby, especially not just sitting in front of the tv for hours on end. If he had been younger, he was sure that he would have been avidly into video games. But he was thirty four and born in the late seventies, so he doubted he ever would be. 

Bilbo had a pile of books on his bedside table from the library, all of them yet to be read. He grabbed the first one from the top and opened it, but he barely got past the first paragraph before his eyes started to slide off of the words, refusing to take them in. He ended up just staring at the page for a good few minutes before he put it back and sat up, running a hand through his hair. He had all of his lesson plans for the next week done, so he couldn’t even focus on that to keep himself busy. 

All in all, Bilbo’s life was starting to feel like one long, exasperated sigh. 

He needed something to keep him occupied. 

Well, the rain was letting up. That was a start. 

Bilbo got up and rooted around in his wardrobe for his boots, the ones that were a little big but kept the water out. Even just a quick walk to the shop to get some bloody Sudoku books was better than sitting around and doing nothing all day. 

He left a note for Belladonna, still asleep, and pulling on his parka, left the house and stepped into the deluge. 

The closest shop was a three minute walk to the end of the street and then you turn left. From there, you got a fantastic view of the ocean, and today, of the storm that would be closing in later that night. It looked ominous even from the street, but Bilbo lingered under a bus stop for a minute to check he hadn’t actually forgotten his wallet. No, he had it in his back pocket. Right. 

The storm was going to be a big one. Even now, the introductory winds felt like blunted knives across Bilbo’s skin. He was glad that he never really bothered with his hair, because it was getting absolutely wrecked in the wind. He looked at the sea, no doubt slamming into the cliffs with all of the force they could muster. There would be lightning, and thunder, and gardens that would be absolutely trashed in the morning. Bilbo was already dreading the walk to work. The preschool he worked at was downhill, so if it was flooded, he wouldn’t even be remotely surprised. Small towns like Stonemere had problems like that all the time, especially during storm season. Flooding, roofs being stripped away by the wind, small trees crushing cars and gates and driveways. It would be chaos. 

Bilbo might get a day off of work from it, but that meant no pay, and no pay meant Belladonna didn’t get her medication, and Bilbo wasn’t going to have that. 

He got to the shop twenty minutes before it closed. He didn’t even know what he was going to get, so just grabbed a basket and threw in anything cheap and vaguely appealing. He ended up with a Sudoku book, yes, but he’d always been good at that, so why not? A bottle of wine, which only he could drink, a tub of ice cream, perhaps too many unhealthy carbohydrates in questionable packaging, and one of those romance paperbacks Belladonna liked so much. And just as Bilbo was about to pay, he asked for a pack of cigarettes. 

He hadn’t smoked in years. Well, three years, to be precise, but once you started you never could truly quit, he found. And he was stressed. Work had been hell the last week, and he was feeling like crap, so why not?

But when he got outside and went to the closest bus stop to light one, he realised that he had forgotten to buy a lighter. 

He cursed under his breath with a cigarette between his teeth, rooting around in his coat pockets in case he had left one in there, for some reason. That’s where you usually found lighters, wasn’t it? In your coat pockets, even though you haven’t smoked in three damn years and never really use candles. 

“Here, borrow mine,” came a voice behind him, and Bilbo almost jumped. He had set his shopping on the ground, where it would be safe from the rain hammering on the bus shelter roof, so he didn’t drop anything. 

The stranger behind him was handing over his lighter - the fancy Zippo kind, Bilbo noticed - with a shy look on his face. Oh, he was very… tall. 

“Thank you,” Bilbo said. It took a few tries to get it going, but he quickly lit his cigarette and passed it back to the stranger, who did the same to his own, clearly hand rolled. Bilbo had never gotten the hang of that. He always stuck to straights. 

“Storm tonight,” the stranger said. He sat down next to Bilbo on the bench and leaned his head back against the plastic. He had a strikingly sharp profile and black hair pushed back from his face, touched liberally at the temples with grey. He looked weary, and Bilbo recognised that before he took in anything else. 

“Oh really? I didn’t notice,” Bilbo says, perhaps more sarcastic that intended. He inhaled the nicotine and found it made him quite dizzy after three years, but it still felt nice. 

“Are you heading home?” the man asked. 

“Yeah. Two minutes that way,” Bilbo gestured to his left. 

“I live across town. When I first moved in, I got lost twice before I figured out how to get to and from work,” the man said, smiling dryly. 

“Where do you work?” Bilbo asked. He couldn’t really see any way out of this conversation, but at least the guy was good looking. That must have counted for something. 

“Stonemere Secondary.”

“Heh. I’m at Summerville. What do you teach?” Bilbo asked. He tried to blow smoke rings, but it seemed he couldn’t really do it as well as he had before. The man next to him saw him struggling and, after a long drag, took the smoke back, and a second later, blew out a series of rings. 

“Music,” he said. 

“Sounds fun. I chase after four year olds all day and get covered in paint and doodles,” Bilbo said. “Bilbo.” He held his hand out. 

“Thorin,” the man said, shaking his hand. His grip was steady and firm, and through his gloves, his hands were warm. 

“So what are you doing out in the rain?” Bilbo asked. The smoke was warming him up, though his damp hair was going to take a while, and when it dried, it was going to be a curly, wild mess. He hoped he was inside before that happened. The rain didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon. 

“Visiting my sister. What are  _ you  _ doing out in the rain?” 

“Getting out of the house.”

“I see.” Thorin looked at him, looking up and down very obviously, and Bilbo almost wanted to retreat into himself at the sight. It was one thing being a teacher and being looked at by students every day, it was quite another to be blatantly stared at by a stranger in a bus shelter. Oh god, was he about to get knifed? No, he doubted it. Thorin was a music teacher who looked like he was practically dead on his feet after whatever the hell he had been doing all day. 

“My nephew goes to Summerville, you might have taught him,” Thorin said eventually. “His name’s Kili Ithtir.”

“Dark hair, likes  _ Percy Jackson _ , finds it apparently impossible to stay still for two minutes?” Bilbo asked, knowing full well that he  _ did  _ teach a Kili Ithtir, and he doubted he would ever meet any other child with that name. 

“That’s him,” Thorin said. “Did you teach his brother?”

“No, I’ve only been here for three years. It’s… Fili? Is that right?” Bilbo asked. Thorin nodded. 

“Yes, Fili. Where are you from?” Thorin asked. What was with all of the questions? Well, at least Bilbo wasn’t smoking in a bus shelter alone,  _ that  _ would have been miserable. He didn’t really mind the questions, either. 

“Salisbury,” Bilbo said. 

“And now you’re up in sunny Stonemere,” Thorin said, gesturing to the rain and the storm clouds with a disbelieving look on his face. “I’m assuming something brought you here.”

“I used to come here with my parents in the summer. When my dad died, my mum wanted to move here, so we both came, and now I live with her,” Bilbo said. Something must have passed over his face, because Thorin’s eyebrows rose in curiosity. 

“You came  _ here  _ in the summer,” he said, laughing. “Of all places, you came  _ here _ .”

“I was six, I didn’t choose it,” Bilbo said defensively, which only made Thorin laugh more. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just… Stonemere. For the  _ summer _ . I’ve lived here most of my life and I get usually go somewhere warm as soon as school finishes,” he said. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel. Bilbo wasn’t done, he just blew smoke in Thorin’s general direction. 

“My parents met here. It was sentimental, I guess,” he said, shrugging. 

“Right. And you live with your mother?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“No, I was just curious. You seem interesting,” Thorin said. He put his hands into his pockets and looked at the storm closing in quicker than Bilbo had thought it would. The rain was getting heavier, and thunder was rumbling in the distance. 

“I’m thirty four, I teach infant school, and I live with my mother. I’m hardly interesting,” Bilbo said. He took a final drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out against the side of the bus shelter and flicking it away. 

“When you teach music to disinterested teenagers, anything new is interesting,” Thorin said, stepping out into the rain. “Until we meet again, Mister Baggins.”

“Right.” Bilbo said. 

It wasn’t until he got home that he realised he hadn’t said his last name at all. 

 

The next few days were terribly slow and boring. Bilbo felt like a zombie at work, and when he got home, he just grabbed a sandwich and went straight to bed, too tired to do anything else. More sick children and more angry parents, except this time, it was over Bilbo calling up and saying that there was a lice outbreak and that parents should double check their children before school every day, if they could. He downed perhaps a little too much coffee, and at the end of the school week, let himself indulge in chocolate and a quiet movie night with Belladonna. 

The Friday afternoon when school finished, however, he met Thorin again. 

“Uncle Thorin!” Kili had shouted from the other side of the room. Bilbo didn’t even see him move before he launched himself at his uncle like a small, human torpedo. Thorin caught him and hoisted him up, like some parents were doing with their children now that they were being picked up. Thorin whispered something to his nephew and Kili turned, pointing at Bilbo and saying something inaudible. Bilbo sighed and walked over, knowing what was coming. 

“It’s nice to see you again,” Thorin said when he approached. He kept hold of Kili, who was looking at Bilbo with those unnerving brown eyes, too old for a child of six. 

“And you. I thought you worked in a school,” Bilbo said, folding his arms over his chest. 

“I do. I had a half day. Which means that the students got to go home at twelve, and I stayed behind until two. I promised Dis I would pick Kili and Fili up from school today,” Thorin said. He set Kili down and told him to go say goodbye to his friends, and he ran off. 

“That’s your sister?” Bilbo asked. 

“Yes,” Thorin said simply. When he didn’t have a six year old in his arms, his demeanour hardened infinitely. Bilbo would have pegged him for a soldier, not a teacher, even just by the way he stood. Perfectly straight and steady, with his hands behind his back. 

“Anything nice planned for the weekend?” Bilbo asked, just trying to make idle conversation. 

“Lesson plans and marking homework. My students will be the death of me,” Thorin said, dropping his voice as two children ran past and towards what Bilbo assumed was their father. Thorin looked at them over his shoulder, and somehow, his eyes got colder, as if they weren’t practically sub-zero already. “You teach Oropher’s children, too?” 

“Mister Oropher? Yes, Legolas and Tauriel. You know them?” Bilbo said. He watched Mister Oropher kneel down with a tiny, guarded smile to talk to his children. As far as he knew, Legolas was his son by blood, and Tauriel his daughter by legality. 

“A little,” Thorin said. “Excuse me.”

Bilbo watched him walk into the classroom where Kili was trying to put everything into his book bag, to no avail, and crouch down beside him to take some of the bigger books. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and said something, smiling gently as Kili got that look of intense concentration on his face he got when he was doing particularly hard sums. Bilbo felt like he shouldn’t be watching their interaction, but he couldn’t help looking. Kili was a little odd, sometimes quiet and withdrawn, sometimes bursting with energy and driving Bilbo up the wall. He was friends with Oropher’s foster daughter and followed her around like a doting puppy, but that was it. He didn’t have any other friends. 

Another parent was trying to get his attention, and so Bilbo looked away from Thorin and Kili to answer their questions on lice treatment. 

Thorin and Kili were among the last to leave. As it turns out, many students at Summerville had siblings at the secondary school down the road, and so their parents stopped Thorin and asked him how their children were doing in year eight music, or how their GCSE with Thorin was going. Bilbo was just an observer, sometimes saying goodbye to other parents, mostly just tidying up the classroom while he waited to be alone. He could leave in an hour and not think about school for the next two days. Getting into the habit of getting his lesson plans done during the week had honestly saved Bilbo’s life in his last job, and it seemed to be doing the same now. 

Thorin gave him a knowing look and smile when they passed as he left, and Bilbo watched him carry his nephew’s book bag while they walked side by side. He had meant to ask how Thorin had known his surname, but he guessed that that was because of Kili. Thorin must have put two and two together and pulled his surname from his memory to thoroughly freak Bilbo out. 

But, he left, and Bilbo promptly forgot about him in order to get things sorted for the weekend. 

Which is how he found himself wrapped in a blanket with a cup of steaming herbal tea while he and Belladonna watched some terrible miniseries on TV together. 

“Who would wear a top hat like that?” Belladonna said at the TV, only half serious. 

“It’s set during the industrial revolution, they were in fashion,” Bilbo said. 

“He still looks ridiculous.” 

Bilbo had to agree. He wasn’t even really paying attention, he was so tired, but the main character seemed to be fond of his top hat, and his ridiculous temper against a woman he barely knew. Bilbo could see the ending already, mostly because he had seen this before. It was disappointingly predictable, and inevitably heterosexual, much like most historical shows Belladonna seemed to be fond of. 

“He’s handsome, though,” she said, looking at Bilbo. 

“Not my type,” he said, and sipped his tea. Belladonna just laughed disbelievingly and went back to half watching and half crocheting. 

It was the kind of Friday night in Bilbo needed. Last week, he had had to stay late for some staff meeting he wasn’t even needed for. Today, he had been home by five and in pyjamas by half past, as per tradition. Even as a teenager, he would get into pyjamas as soon as he got home. They just made everything much more comfortable. 

“She can do better,” Bilbo said when the protagonist started to realise her feelings for Mister Broody Mama’s Boy. 

“Of course she can, but she doesn’t realise it,” Belladonna said. She looked at the television crossley, halting in her crochet. Bilbo had no idea what she did with the things she made, but they were never seen again once she finished them. Bilbo just assumed she gave them to the neighbours, or sold them online, or something. 

“Why?” Bilbo asked. 

“She has low expectations of herself. She’ll end up with the factory owner and it’ll be a lovely dramatic ending, but once the cameras turn off, she’s going to be with a man who doesn’t actually care,” she said. Sometimes Bilbo forgot that she used to be a psychologist. 

“Do you psychoanalyse soap opera characters when I’m at work?” Bilbo asked, smiling over his tea at her. He got a sly smile back. 

“Maybe I do. You’ll never know,” she said. 

“Oh, there’s another storm tonight,” Bilbo said, suddenly remembering. Just before he left, Thorin had told him in a quiet voice - make sure all of your windows are bolted shut, and you’ve taken flooding measures just in case. It was a strange warning, but the wind that had almost knocked Bilbo over on his way home had proven it. 

“Damn coastal storms,” Belladonna said, and then she muttered something Bilbo didn’t quite catch, or maybe she said it in another language. Knowing her, the woman who spoke three languages because of how much she had travelled abroad before settling down, she was speaking in Spanish or Arabic. “We should go out and get driftwood tomorrow if it’s not raining. It’ll be marvellous in the fireplace.”

“Sure,” Bilbo said, glancing at their fireplace. It was rarely used except in the winter, but it was nice once you finally got it started. There was nothing like a live fire in your house to make you feel like you’d gone back in time several decades, Bilbo always thought, not always positively. Still, they could use a bit more of a cosy touch here. 

“Something’s wrong,” Belladonna said. Bilbo didn’t even balk at that. He was the son of two psychologists, he was used to his parents just  _ knowing  _ when he wasn’t quite right. 

“There was a storm last friday. And the friday before that. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?” he said. He drained his tea and set the mug on the coffee table. “And I ran into someone last Friday and today, around the same time. I don’t know. It feels odd.”

“Hmm. Sounds it. Who was it?” Belladonna asked. 

“A man called Thorin. He teaches music at the secondary school.” Bilbo watched her for a reaction. He had picked up a few tricks from her over the years, too. 

“Thorin Durin?” Belladonna asked, one eyebrow raising. 

“I guess? I didn’t catch his last name. Really tall, has a beard, wears a long coat?” Bilbo said, gesturing to his own beardless face. He could barely even grow stubble, let alone a beard like  _ that. _

“Yes,” Belladonna said. “I knew his parents.”

“Really?”

“Well, your father and I were coming here ten years before you were born, so yes, I knew them. Thrain and Yael Durin. The family has been here for generations, practically laid the towns foundations, if you believe what they talk about. It’s all old blood in that family,” Belladonna said, shrugging. “God, he must be in his forties now. I remember Yael having just had a son when we first started coming here.”

“Wow.” That was all Bilbo could say. No doubt Belladonna had some old friends here, given that she and Bungo would stay for months if they could, before Bilbo tied them down to one place. “So you knew him as a child?”

“Only in passing. He was an absolute weed. I saw him the other day when I was talking to Nori from next door, he looks completely different now.” Belladonna gestured with her hands, towards Nori’s house and towards the front garden. She was an expressive talker, something Bilbo had inherited, but not… not quite. He had an expressive face, not expressive hands. 

“I can imagine,” Bilbo said. 

“You should ask him for tea, I’m sure I’ve got some stories about his parents he doesn’t know about,” Belladonna said. 

“If I run into him again, I’ll be sure to ask,” Bilbo said. “More tea?”

 

Going to bed later, Bilbo couldn’t even attempt to tune out the storm. It was making the old walls and roof of the house creak and shake, and the flashes of lightning and rumble of thunder felt too close to be safe. Bilbo laid out on his side and looked at the window, seeing odd silhouettes of the plants on the windowsill caught in lightning, like polaroids taken incorrectly. There was something pleasantly eerie about it all. 

He closed his eyes eventually and let the sound of it all wash over him. The rain and the wind, a conversation of natural forces that combined to create the lashing on the windows and the howling in the skies above. Thunder and lightning, twin forces of nature that couldn’t be one without the other. 

Bilbo opened his eyes and groaned, mentally telling himself to stop thinking like a former Creative Writing student and go to  _ sleep _ . 

He looked up at the ceiling, but his eyes were drawn to movement in the window, a shadow too large to be his treasures basil or rosemary. He sat up abruptly and stared at it. It lingered behind the curtain and stayed still, a shape that resembled some kind of animal, though Bilbo was too tired to think what. It shuddered and disappeared, and Bilbo was left looking at the silhouettes of leaves. 

Out of nowhere, a gust of wind passed through his room, seemingly from nowhere. That wouldn’t have come as a surprise to Bilbo, the only house was draughty and old. No, it was the smell it carried, sea salt and brine, the unmistakable smell of wind coming straight off of the sea. 

They were a mile inland. 

The wind came again, and this time, it carried with it a voice. Cold and brittle, but with power behind it. A voice that made Bilbo think of the sea and the waves and the rock pools he explored as a child. 

“ _ Come to me _ ,” it said. “ _ Come to me _ .”

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [here](http://gaypippin.tumblr.com/)  
> find the pinterest board for this fic [here](https://uk.pinterest.com/illegalfoxes/to-the-ocean/)


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